Sentient Thrive (Thrive Space Colony Adventures)

by Ginger Booth

  “Slaves. As your college savings,” Sass murmured in disbelief.

  Carver spread his hands in entreaty. “Father was gullible. I learned from his mistakes. So, by age seventeen, I have healthy slaves, working decent jobs. The tunnel doesn’t leak. I’m in a relationship with my now-wife – one of my slaves. I spend my free time with her. Along comes Lavelle to ‘liberate’ them. My future. The girl I want to marry. And I’m seventeen and, well, my father’s son. Stupid.” He laughed.

  “So I go with them to Hell’s Bells! And I watch out for my ex-slaves. Still. Now they’re my workforce, my wife, my kids. Family. They want to strike out on their own, I give them severance pay and throw a party. But most, they’re like the stretches you see in the streets of Schuyler. They weren’t educated to succeed in this new world. Noblesse oblige. It’s the cornerstone of Sagamore’s social order. I’ve kept my obligation to the souls I once owned. Until they choose to release me. Or die of old age.”

  Carver waited, face open, for Cope to respond.

  Cope checked the faces around him. Remi bought this story wholesale. Sass and Clay looked thoughtful. Abel and Jules got stuck on a teenager bedding his slave girl. Cope considered that part predictable.

  Ben met his eye straight on. “Cope, he’s taking responsibility. Same as Josiah, same as you. Or me with Dad’s damned tenants in Poldark.”

  Cope wasn’t ready to accept a slaver. “Moving on.”

  Carver sighed, but nodded. “The indentures. After resetting the terms, I would package the obligations and sell them. Sort of like small-value bonds. Anyone can buy them. They receive the ongoing income instead of Spaceways.” He quirked a lip. “Good investment for college savings.”

  “You can do that?” Abel blurted.

  “Yes. And I sent out my usual feelers to test the market. Many settlers wish they could do more to help Denali, but they don’t know what. When I called your biggest creditor – Mahina Actual – I even pitched a discount originally. Spaceways repay ten percent over what you borrowed. They refused. Insisted on one for one. You have goodwill. You just need to reformat the debt to spread it around.”

  Cope nodded slowly. He could probably get more creditors to accept fuel in repayment instead of cash, too. Though Sex Toys would likely insist on cash, or possibly these new bonds.

  “My second pitch,” Carver plowed on. “Aloha Fret comes with me. I have a strong ground game, and no ships. You have ships and a weak ground game. I’ve been trying for years to get a firm commitment from Spaceways, Lavelle, or Gorky to visit Hell’s Bells once a month. I know I can increase my freight tonnage by a factor of six. But HB only produces raw metals and industrial equipment. The real prize is full trade with Sagamore itself. The pharmaceuticals alone would revolutionize Mahina. And Sagamore has one hell of a time keeping its growing population fed. But Mahina has fields, open-air farming. We can put those slave tunnels out of business.”

  Cope shook his head. “We looked at that –”

  Wait. That assumed hostile relations with Sagamore, and three weeks travel each way to HB, or pay through the nose to fuel the warp gateway.

  “Free fuel, Cope,” Ben murmured. “That changes everything.”

  “Could I please, please, have one monthly ship?” Carver begged. “Six months. Let me prove it to you.”

  Abel asked, “Are you still a Sagamore citizen, Carver?”

  “In good standing,” Carver agreed. “I never rebelled. So far as Sagamore is concerned, I was kidnapped as a child by terrorists. Our age of majority is eighteen. I went home to visit once before I moved to Mahina. And I can go again. I wouldn’t bring my wife.”

  “And you’d handle port-side for us?” Ben asked wistfully. “Manage fuel and supplies?”

  Carver nodded. “I’m happy to expand my operations. But I’m not sure what all you need.”

  “Decontamination? Reception?” Sass pressed. “We arrive with thousands of immigrants and hand them over? Without just kicking them out to die. That part really bothers me. Clay and I arrived that way.”

  “I know what we need,” Ben complained. “But I couldn’t stop the evacuation to tool up.”

  Jules nodded emphatically. “A real welcome. Reception tent pavilions, Denali healers for triage.”

  Sass added, “Sunblock, food, water, clothes.”

  “Training,” Ben added. “How to use the toilets and sunblock, air protocols, money. They have nothing. They need everything.”

  Carver nodded solemnly. “I hear you. But the situation has evolved. When our paddies arrive here now, the Sag community receives them. The Sanctuary community greeted their latest influx, yes? The Denali can and will do the same. It’s the money. We begin by fixing the money. You know who hires the most Sag immigrants? Other Sags. We must kick-start the Denali sub-economy.”

  Jules nodded slowly. “Fix that, and I bet I can house them.”

  Carver sat back, smile broadening. “What an exciting opportunity!”

  To the engineer, it sounded boring as hell. “So Ben, can you hire people to do nothing but fly back and forth, back and forth, to Sagamore?”

  “Zan,” Ben said instantly. “I don’t trust him here. Or on Denali. Sass has agreed to lead the evacuation next.” He gratefully bowed to her sitting down. “She shouldn’t have to put up with him again.”

  “Thank you, Ben!” Sass crooned, heartfelt.

  Abel sighed loudly and recrossed his legs. “We could just fire Zan.”

  “Tempting.” Cope waived a hand. “Ben’s call. Clay? You’ve been quiet.”

  “Your call,” Clay returned dryly. “But I like what I’m hearing. Carver plans to leverage the immigrant community. Which is all of us, old settlers and newcomers alike. On his resume, I especially liked his leadership role with the Sag chamber of commerce. As first mate, I’ve carried for Aloha Fret. An absolute joy to do business with, compared to the usual clown show.”

  “Amen,” Ben breathed.

  Cope sighed and considered Carver. “But you’re not ready to take over as president.”

  Carver’s brow crumpled. “I don’t see how that could work. You need a transition period with anyone you bring on. I suggest we write a contract. Call it a trial merger, for our companies to become one for say, six months. Then we decide whether to make it permanent. I restructure your debt and Mahina-side reception. In return for monthly ships to Hell’s Bells, and later Sagamore. Gradually you’re freed to spend more time on R&D and less with me. And we go from there.”

  “And your payment?”

  “Reliable monthly freight service to Hell’s Bells,” Carver repeated doggedly. “And carry my mail to Denali.”

  Cope gaped at him in disbelief. “People really bought that postage scheme?”

  “Yes! I’m sitting on two million credits of Denali letters!”

  Sass laughed musically. “I’ll carry your letters. Only to the ports, mind you. I won’t hire Denali mail carriers.”

  “Exactly. That’s the point! I can arrange the ground game.” Carver spread his hands. “You people are amazing trailblazers. Adventurers! Inventors! I’m the reliable business guy who stays in Schuyler to raise the kids. A couple business trips to open doors for Abel on Sagamore and SO. I can help you!”

  With that, at last Cope felt a connection to the guy. Cope had stayed home in Schuyler to raise his kids, Abel and Jules alongside him. While Ben and Sass sailed away, unwilling to give up the glory. Now the kids were grown, and the trio itched to ditch the mansion and rejoin Ben. He doubted Carver was ready to deliver all he promised. It wouldn’t be that simple. But he was sincere, smart, and he’d grow into the role. They all did.

  Cope rose and extended his hand to shake. “Deal. Let’s make it work.”

  49

  Texan plastered hands and face against the dusty shopfront window to peer into what was Nathan Acosta’s dentist office, just like the tenant Tovik did on first meeting.

  “That’s a bit rude,” Ben noted, knowing full well he’
d have done the same at age 12.

  Ben was nervous about this outing. He’d met Texan a couple times over the past few months, stilted affairs with all three dads – four with Nathan – plus the older kids and assorted Thrive-family, always in Mahina Actual. Amid the throng, the two of them didn’t get much chance to connect.

  But the boy mentioned he’d never left the urb capital.

  Ben couldn’t follow up at the time. He was leaving to test their third warp gateway, install it on Thrive One, and train Sass how to use it. Then he observed on her first evacuation run to Denali, straight through to their new Schuyler reception experience. With Jules, they put their hearts into training their new welcome crew once Carver lined up volunteers. Finally free today, Ben invited Texan to visit Poldark, just the two of them.

  “No, it’s a yoga ashram,” Texan quipped.

  “Smart-ass.” Ben smirked and glanced in, too. “Wonder if I should knock.”

  “You own the place.” Texan quit peering and hauled open the door, eyes dancing in challenge. A handful of yogis within uncoiled from their cobras and other contortions as the door cowbell clanged. Their teacher bowed with prayer fingers.

  “Uh, looking for Tovik,” Ben said sheepishly. “Ben Acosta. My son Texan.” He glanced anxiously at the boy as he claimed the relation. Their other Denali boy, Socrates, was an intense introvert. Ben feared Texan would display the same wince-worthy diffidence. But Texan waved, then bounded upstairs to the next level.

  Literally. Today Ben gifted him his first adjustable grav generator. About the only setting the kid hadn’t tried was Earth-normal, the one he was supposed to use all the time.

  Tovik’s voice boomed from above. “Ben! Be right down!”

  The dentist waiting area sure looked different, swathed in busy fabrics above a rubbery floor. The decor reminded him of his daughter’s funky harem flop in town. Dad’s treatment room now served as someone’s bedroom. Where Benjy once played receptionist while he studied, a pseudo-pewter samovar offered tea, wafting exotic spices.

  Three months had passed since Carver Cartwright joined the Spaceways team. His immediate slashing of indenture repayments impacted happiness levels moon-wide. The immigrants now disposed their income on pursuits like these, readily adapting to a cash economy once they had money to play along.

  “Ben! You look great!” Tovik trotted down the stairs from the household above. “He’s your son?”

  Ben nodded and called upstairs. “Texan? We’re in the back yard. Don’t annoy people.”

  The men exited the building. Ben made quick work of repairing the leak in the greenhouse that occasioned the tenant visit. Texan bounced in, all eyes, to study the hydroponic setup and crops. But he’d spent his first creche years in a Denali farm tunnel. Within minutes, he ran ahead to check out the school playground.

  “An academic,” Tovik noted. “I guess you don’t honor Denali ways? We wouldn’t know our parents at that age.”

  “We introduced ourselves,” Ben returned. “We’re willing to be his family as much or as little as he chooses. Today he jumped at the chance to see the real Mahina, outside the creche. I don’t know that he’s interested in me.”

  “I’m sure he is. Famous father. You were right, Ben. I took your suggestion, volunteered to lead in town instead of complain. They like that.” His brow crumpled in puzzlement, why the townies would accept a newcomer throwing his weight around.

  “You saw,” Ben assured him. “Dad and I haven’t lived here in decades. We come visit, and they flock for our opinion. You want some more advice?”

  Tovik nodded, lips pressed guardedly.

  “Recruit a healer instead of yoga for the storefront. Poldark is small, but so are the neighboring villes. Dad visited each once a month, twice for the bigger two. We kept a balloon-tire van for a traveling dentist office. But he was the only medic around, so he handled whatever he could. It’s a good income, not a great one.”

  And with Carver’s Sagtown Chamber of Commerce actively teaching Denali to organize, they now had a clearinghouse database to match newcomers to posted needs.

  A smile leaked around Tovik’s grimace. “I’ll look into it. Thanks.” He thrust out his hand to shake, Mahina-fashion. “Did I do that right?”

  Ben adjusted his grip and squeezed. “It’s a man thing. Firm pressure, but don’t break his hand. There, you got it.”

  With a parting wave, he jogged down the back street to the school, mostly abandoned these days. Poldark children attended a satellite creche in one of the neighboring villes. Though a high school class might still lurk in the building.

  Texan dangled from the monkey-bars, working his way across the dry moat. “This place is great! You built this?”

  “Dad and me, yeah – Nathan, my dad. I hated going to school, because I didn’t fit in. Thought the other kids were dumb, and the teacher dumber still. Dad came up with this project to improve my attitude. ‘Life is what you bring to it, Benjy, not what you get out of it!’”

  “You had a good dad!” The boy swung his legs for momentum, then launched himself to the far side. He easily landed in a crouch, bounced back up, and ran for the merry-go-round.

  “Yeah. Still do.” Ben didn’t try to impart just how magical that was, that he’d reached age 40 and still had a living breathing father. The cosmetic changes to Mahina were plentiful. But that one difference, that settlers now lived to amass experience and pass on knowledge, felt like the crucial one to him. I still have Dad.

  “How did you make it?” Texan asked.

  “Foamcrete extruder. PVC pipe, odds and ends. Could use fresh paint.” The regolith dust wasn’t bad here in the center of town. Rings of tree wind breaks and cultivated fields sifted the air. But dust and harsh sun still sanded away paint over the years. “Cope and I love making stuff. We’ll teach you if you want.”

  “Yes!” Having maxed out the centrifugal force on the merry-go-round, Texan leapt off, and rolled with the fall, laughing out loud. No, this kid was nothing like shy Socrates.

  Ben eyed the merry-go-round, still spinning. Why not? He ran and leapt on, then spun it back to max and leapt off. Unlike the boy, he landed running rather than take the fall. He laughed out loud. He’d forgotten the fun of the g’s pushing him outward. This was where he’d fallen in love with the sensation, not in the air. Dad never owned a flyer.

  Texan paced the sawtooth parapet of a play fort, arms extended for balance. “What else are we doing here?”

  Ben glanced toward the mausoleum, tucked into a little grove of dark spruce by the schoolyard. The other reason a little boy hated school – Mom haunted it. And Dad couldn’t let her go. He’d visit her drawer of ashes twice a day on school days, Benjy in tow. But Benjy didn’t want to grieve for his mother forever. He wanted his dad to forget her, and laugh and play and be happy.

  Ben couldn’t remember the last time he’d stepped in to pay his respects. But he brought a present today, dried pressed flowers from Denali and Sylvan. “You don’t have to come,” he told Texan.

  This riveted the lad’s curiosity. He trotted ahead toward the mausoleum, doing a handspring and cartwheel over the hay grass along the way. Was I that hyper, Dad? Nathan’s voice replied clearly in his mind. You were ten times worse. And your mouth! Ben chuckled to himself. Oddly, one thing he hadn’t expected to find in Texan, was himself. Teke shone through, too, in his unconscious arrogance when correcting his elders.

  Inside the cool foamcrete hall, Ben located the right plaque, shin-high. Death was the great equalizer in Poldark. Each new inductee received the next available slot. Dad begged to reserve the drawer below for himself, terrorizing a young boy who understood far more than adults yet realized. Benjy was sure Dad planned to go soon, because she was more important than him. He resolved time after time to be more entertaining, more this, more that, but mostly more, so Dad wouldn’t leave him.

  “You’re sad,” Texan observed, searching his face. “Do you miss her?”

  “I missed her,
” Ben agreed, in the other sense. Their paths scarcely overlapped in time. “Never got a chance to know her, really.” He hung his papery blooms with a bent wire. Few other offerings graced this bank of drawers, their nearest and dearest interred themselves by now. “She was pretty. My smile comes from her. Yours too.”

  Texan wrinkled his nose in discomfort and stepped away to explore.

  “You’d like Frazzie,” Ben murmured to his mother’s drawer, though he wondered. His daughter was brash and crude, a Schuyler girl after Cope’s heart. Mom was a class act, never a harsh word for anyone. Sorry I haven’t come by. I do think of you.

  Ben straightened to leave. “Not as pretty here as Denali, is it.”

  Texan skewered him with surprised hazel eyes. “Much prettier than Denali Prime. I camped overnight in the jungle once. I’d make a great hunter!” This thought seemed to kill his ebullience, and he fell in beside Ben to walk.

  “You like being an academic, though?”

  “I make a rotten academic,” Texan confided. “Sensei says I’m clever cosmo and a dull itten.”

  “Dilettante,” Ben corrected.

  “What does it mean?”

  “The word means you flit from one thing to the next. Curious about everything, but no one thing. I’m the same way. Then I found space. You’re fine the way you are, Texan. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. They’re wrong. A generalist sees the big picture. We’re valuable that way.”

  Apparently this satisfied the kid. He flashed a sudden grin. “Can I fly on the way home?”

  “Fly. The shuttle?”

  “I found the training simulator in the MA database. Sensei caught me at it.” This worthy proctor was den mother to Texan’s creche-mates, a parental figure who accompanied them from cradle to middle school. The woman played favorites, and Texan was not her flavor. “But Sock showed me how to bypass her and practice anyway.”